If you like amusing mysteries, like Donald Westlake, try Robert Barnard.
“This latest expertly plotted whodunit from Barnard’s reliable pen takes his readers into the halls of Parliament to observe Colin Pinnock, MP, enter the government as a junior minister in the department of education and training. Oh, isn’t everybody happy for our young, rising politician. Well, not everyone, for Colin, still flush from his promotion, receives a perplexing and even intimidating message from an unknown person. The message seems to imply that Colin can’t be certain of his parentage. Colin decides to investigate whether this is true, and the path he follows leads to an infamous figure once in the public eye and now presumed dead or in hiding, one Lord John Revill, who murdered his wife and was carrying on with their children’s nanny. An important fact he comes across is that at the time the wife met her unfortunate end, the nanny was with child. Or was she with more than one child? Ah, therein lies the solution to the problem, and Barnard unfolds Colin’s road to self-discovery with excellent pacing.” – Booklist Reviews